Moira Forbes hosts the video series "Success with Moira Forbes" and "Women to Watch." She is publisher of ForbesWoman, a multi-media platform serving successful women in business and leadership. Representing four generations of publishers, Moira joined Forbes in 2001 in its London office. She graduated from Princeton University.

Lessons In Courage From Africa's First Female President

Ma Ellen. The Iron Lady. Africa’s Queen. People across the world regularly use these names to describe Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female President of Liberia and the continent’s first female head of state. They hint at the immeasurable amount of strength, charisma, and conviction it required for her to win the 2005 election (and re-election in 2011), where she not only beat despotic leaders who used violence against her and the voters, but also convinced a nation that a woman could serve in the role. When she took office, Johnson-Sirleaf became a figure of hope and inspiration for a broken country—and for the rest of the world.

How did she do it? By drawing upon her extraordinary leadership skills, her cool and rationale thinking even in the most turbulent times, and with her unwavering message of hope that stirred a nation into action. These are the same attributes that have changed Liberia so dramatically since she came into office: clawing it out of debt, making social initiatives a priority, and bringing it from “battered, broken, hopeless” to “nothing can stop us now.”

Perhaps even more astounding than all of that is the optimism and level-headedness Johnson-Sirleaf has exhibited throughout the presidential elections and during her terms, given that she inherited a country in complete disarray: one fraught with civil war, coups, violence, crime, extreme poverty, and few educational opportunities for its citizens. While her initiatives are hugely wide-reaching and vary, she has never strayed from her goals of peace, social justice, and economic stability for Liberia.

But the list of challenges that she’s overcome along the way—navigating decades of violence and the horrors of war in Liberia, stints in jail where her life was in danger because of her beliefs, making education a priority in a country where 80 percent of the existing schools had been destroyed by war, and rebuilding a country with $4.9 billion in debt—is even longer. “It’s been a lifetime…of making sure that I keep struggling to not only to survive, but to succeed,” she says.

“[As a teenager, my] life was sort of turned upside down,” she remembers. “I got married at 17 years old and had four children. I had just come out of high school. My classmates had all gone off to college in the U.S. or some other place. And there I was taking care of four boys.” Going to college became a goal so that she could “equal those friends and classmates who’d gone ahead,” she says, one that ultimately ignited ambitions far greater than what Liberia’s president could have ever anticipated.

“It was just a question of struggling to make it—making sure you don’t get left behind.” In time, she achieved that goal and then some: Johnson-Sirleaf earned an accounting degree at the Madison College of Business, later studied economics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and eventually received a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Never Waver

Like Margaret Thatcher, Johnson-Sirleaf is often referred to as the Iron Lady, a testament to her unwavering strength in situations that would make most people run in the opposite direction, or at least give up, such as a self-imposed exile during the presidency of Charles Taylor, escaping the murderous coup led by her 2005 former President Samuel Doe, and being jailed twice by Doe.

“I think it started with being able to work in an environment that was largely male-dominated [in the financial realm]…[it] prepared me to have the courage of my conviction,” she says. “And where I am today, I think, attests to what determination and preservation and commitment can do.” Johnson-Sirleaf draws from the experiences she had earlier in her career in the financial sector in her post-conflict country by promoting fiscal discipline.

Different Is Not Just Okay, It’s A Strength

Great leaders thrive, even in the most uncomfortable situations. Johnson-Sirleaf has done that since she was a young girl. “I played football when girls were not supposed to play football,” says Johnson-Sirleaf, recounting that the strength and determination she called on to run around with the boys are the same qualities she has harnessed innumerable times in career.

“There are times when taking positions got me into trouble…I ended up in prison couple of times,” she says. “But that also propelled [me forward].” In addition to rebuilding Liberia’s economy, education has been a top priority for the President, who wants schooling to be a birthright for all children in her country.

Rise Above Fear

“You’re picked up after a coup d’etat as a political leader, and get thrown into a prison in the midst of a bunch of soliders…I was told I was going to be driven to the beach and killed,” recalls Johnson-Sirleaf of her ordeal as a political prisoner under the murderous Samuel Doe. Despite the danger and violence surrounding her, she confesses in her autobiography that she was not afraid during this harrowing time. “I should’ve been afraid but I wasn’t afraid,” she wrote.

“The truth is that with all I went through, I should be dead.” She credits convincing the soldiers in the prison that she was fearless for her survival. And she thinks her upbringing by her mother, who was a pastor, and her father, who was one of the first indigenous members of Liberia’s legislature, planted the seed of unwavering courage early on.

Embrace Optimism

Despite Liberia’s history of warlords, civil war, poverty and a collapsed economy, Johnson-Sirleaf has never wavered in her hope for Liberia’s future: “I was always optimistic that it could change—and there were enough people committed to that change—and that if we all were able to show the courage to be a part of the processes of change, that it would happen. And it did.”

She isn’t finished with her work; this is what Liberia’s future looks like to Johnson-Sirleaf: peace, financial stability, a higher standard of living for all [including electricity and running water for citizens], and education for everyone.

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